"Thus it is said that one who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements."
Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

Friday, May 04, 2012

Bin Laden Letters Show Desire to Attack U.S. Targets

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON – Osama bin Laden’s letters urged jihadist
groups to stop domestic attacks that killed Muslim civilians and focus on the
United States, “our desired goal,” says a study of declassified documents
captured during last year’s U.S. raid on his compound in Pakistan.

The 59-page study titled “Letters from
Abbottabad: Bin Laden Sidelined?” released online today, was written by a team
of researchers the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and supplemented
with reviews and support from other experts.

The center is an independent, privately
funded research and educational institution at the U.S. Military Academy that
informs counterterrorism policy and strategy.

The end of the Abbottabad raid was the
start of a massive analytical effort, retired Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the
center’s chairman, said in the report’s foreword, adding that experts from
across the intelligence community worked to exploit the captured documents.

The letters total 175 pages in the
original Arabic and 197 pages in the English translation. The earliest is dated
September 2006 and the latest April 2011, the authors write, adding that some
letters are incomplete or undated and not all attribute their authors or
indicate an addressee.

Besides bin Laden, those who appear in
the letters as authors or recipients include al-Qaida leaders Atiyyatullah and
Abu Yahya al-Libi; Adam Yahya Gadahn, an American al-Qaida spokesman and media
advisor; Mukhtar Abu al-Zubayr, leader of Somali militant group Harakat
al-Shabab al-Mujahidin; Abu Basir, or Nasir al-Wuhayshi, leader of Yemen-based
al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula; and Hakimullah Mahsud, leader of
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

“Bin Laden’s frustration with regional
jihadi groups and his seeming inability to exercise control over their actions
and public statements is the most compelling story to be told on the basis of
the 17 declassified documents,” the report said.

Bin Laden’s public statements focused on
Muslim enemies such as corrupt Muslim rulers and their Western “overseers,” the
analysis said, but “the focus of his private letters is Muslims suffering at
the hands of his jihadi ‘brothers.’”

The late al-Qaida chieftain also had
been burdened by the incompetence of affiliate terror group, the report said,
“including their lack of political acumen to win public support, their media
campaigns and their poorly planned operations” that killed thousands of
Muslims.

The failures of al-Qaida in Iraq worried
bin Laden, who urged other groups not to repeat their mistakes. Gadahn advised
al-Qaida to publicly dissociate itself from the group, the report says.

Bin Laden also worried about expansion
plans of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, for example warning them not to
declare an Islamic state in Yemen, and about indiscriminate attacks against
Muslims by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.

Such attacks “caused Atiyyatullah and
Abu Yahya al-Libi to write to TTP leader Hakimullah Mahsud to express their
displeasure with the group’s ‘ideology, methods and behavior,’” the report
said.

The al-Qaida leaders “also threatened to
take public measures ‘unless we see from you serious and immediate practical
and clear steps towards reforming [your ways] and dissociating yourself from
these vile mistakes [that violate Islamic Law],’” the report added.

Bin Laden withheld recognition of a
February pledge of loyalty to al-Qaida by Somali rebel movement al-Shabab, the
report said, fearing “that a formal merger with al-Qaida would prevent
investment and foreign aid in Somalia.”

The documents released to the Combating
Terrorism Center at West Point mentioned al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the
Taliban and Jaysh al-Islam, but the report says the discussions “are not
substantive enough to inform an understanding of the relationship between
al-Qaida’s senior leaders and these groups.”

Among the documents is an April 2011
letter from bin Laden responding to the Arab Spring, which he considered a
“formidable event” in the modern history of Muslims.

“This letter,” the report says,
“reflected his intended strategy of responding to the new political landscape
that was emerging in the Middle East and North Africa.”

In the Arab world, bin Laden wanted
al-Qaida to focus its efforts on media outreach and “guidance.” He believed
that a media campaign should be launched to incite “people who have not yet
revolted and exhort them to rebel against the rulers,” the report said.

But he also wanted to invest, the report
said, in “educating and warning Muslim people from those [who might tempt them
to settle for] half solutions, such as engaging in the secular political
process by forming political parties.”

In Afghanistan, bin Laden wanted jihadis
to continue the fight against the United States.

Bin Laden believed their efforts, the
report said, “weakened the United States, enabling Muslims elsewhere to revolt
against their rulers, no longer fearing that the United States would be in a
powerful position to support these rulers.”

The documents show that al-Qaida’s
relationship with Iran is one of “indirect and unpleasant negotiations over the
release of detained jihadis and their families, including members of bin
Laden’s family,” the report said, adding that discussion about Pakistan in the
documents is “scarce and inconclusive.”